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March 2017

Mar 20

How to protect your organization from cybercriminals

By Sponsor Insight

By Ann M. Merkel, Senior Vice President and Chief Market Development Officer, The National Bank of Indianapolis

You are sitting at your computer, working happily away on a project, when you receive an email from a co-worker or friend, encouraging you to open an embedded link or an attachment.  Or maybe it’s an urgently worded email from your organization’s executive director, instructing you to immediately wire funds to a new vendor.  Or worse, the message instructs you to email to them the W-2 information of all your employees.  Curious or eager to help, you click on the link or open the attachment.

Unfortunately, you’ve just exposed your organization to Business Email Compromise and the potential loss of confidential information, as well as funds.

In recent months in Indiana, nonprofits, governmental entities and private corporations have all been targeted by cybercriminals who gained access to information, mostly through emails containing embedded links or attachments.  Cybercriminals threaten to steal your data, encrypt or destroy it or make confidential records public. If you’re “lucky,” they may offer to give the data back…for a price.

This hijacking of data and demand for payment has created its own apt name: ransomware.  Unfortunately, ransomware can be purchased for less than the cost of a smartphone or a designer handbag.  It’s also a faster and less expensive way to steal than credit card identity theft. Nationwide in 2014, there were 783 cyberattacks and breaches, exposing 85.6 million records.  In 2015, there were 781 attacks, but the number of records exposed soared to approximately 169 million.  Cybercriminals then share the stolen data through social media outlets. Intel Security (McAfee) and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimated the likely annual cost to the global economy from cybercrime is between $375 billion and $575 billion.

There is no shame in being hacked; criminals are smart in appealing to your interests and making emails look legitimate.  The loss of data, however, is a serious threat.  Key is educating your employees when to be suspicious.  Following are some questions to ask of your organization, and topics to discuss.

Recognizing fraudulent emails:

  • Even if you know the sender, verify that the message is legitimate. Pick up the phone and call or walk down the hall and ask the sender about his or her request.
  • If you receive a request via text message, don’t respond to the text.  Instead, call the number you have on record for the sender and verify the request.
  • Although false emails can look professional, many do not.  Notice misspellings or badly formatted content.
  • Be leery of third-party emails.  Hover your cursor on links to see phony addresses.  It’s best to search separately for the actual URL.
  • Never respond to a request for sensitive information through an unsecured email.
  • If your organization doesn’t already have a policy on internet usage, create one. Let your employees know that they shouldn’t be using their work emails for personal activities. If you use online banking services, consider dedicating a PC for this purpose only.

Suggestions for protecting your information.

  1. Firewalls. Contact your local technology companies and consultants, who often have special rates for nonprofit organizations on firewall technologies, which are designed to prevent unauthorized access, and keep this product current. Heed all security software warnings on links and attachments and do not download if advised not to.
  1. Back up, back up, back up! Viruses aren’t just about your health any more.  Computer viruses, ransomware and malware (software that disables computer systems) are less threats if you back up your work daily. If your data is compromised, you can always go back and retrieve updated files with minimal loss of information. Cloud storage is recommended, but regardless, files should be stored in a separate location.
  1. Saving data. Many nonprofit organizations cannot afford nor do they need a high-tech individual server.  Consider, instead, free data storage cloud services that Google and Microsoft offer to nonprofit organizations.

As your bank’s fraud prevention software has become increasingly impenetrable, cybercriminals are focusing their attacks on you and your employees, instead.  With information gleaned from a nonprofit’s website or from public domains, they use social engineering/phishing to gain access to your organization.

Cybercriminals believe employees are your weakest link.  However, with some training, they can become your strongest asset in fraud prevention.

ann-merkel In her role as Senior Vice President and Chief Market Development Officer for The National Bank of Indianapolis, Ms. Merkel is responsible for cultivating and maintaining high profile corporate, individual and community relationships that strengthen the Bank’s brand and reputation.

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Mar 13

“Executive sessions” give nonprofit leaders a boost

By Feature

By Lynn Sygiel, editor, Charitable Advisors

I just might have a problem that you’ll understand. 
We all need somebody to lean on.
— Bill Withers, “Lean on Me”

Betty Cockrum, the retiring president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, has had a lot on her plate during her 15-year tenure. She manages an organization with 19 locations in two states, 170 employees, and a $16 million budget.

She manages to keep a handle on everything, but every now and then it’s nice to get a little extra help. As the old song goes, it’s nice to have somebody to lean on when you need a hand.

It was just more than three years ago that Cockrum found her “somebody.” She was invited to join a small leadership group, not specific to her nonprofit sector, but a group that has provided invaluable guidance.

“I’m just really grateful that I got invited, and I place great value on it. I feel like everyone of them has become a person in my life that I can call on in the middle of the night,” said Cockrum.

This nonprofit leadership group, which has no official name, was launched by Cassie Stockamp, president of the Athenaeum Foundation, Jim Morris, CEO at Greater Indy Habitat for Humanity, and Kyle Lanham, vice president of community engagement and chief advancement officer at Goodwill of Central & Southern Indiana.

The three had been members of similar for-profit groups. When Morris moved back to Indianapolis from Orlando, Fla., in 2008 and got re-involved in the community, he discovered there wasn’t a group for the nonprofit sector.

“I just started asking around, ‘would anybody want to do something like this?” said Morris.

Both Lanham and Stockamp had had longtime involvement with the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), which was founded in 1950 in Rochester, N.Y., and designed for young for-profit leaders. Both had small for-profit companies, before serving as nonprofit leaders, and Stockamp said for the first seven years, she was the only woman in her group.

After a year of contemplation, and asking questions about whether the size of nonprofits mattered and how dynamic to make the group, the three got serious. They adapted the YPO model and compiled a list of potential collegial candidates. Each reached out to individuals to gauge interest and commitment. But most importantly, they found solace in forming a group that could help shoulder the weight of a nonprofit leader to provide qualitative direction.

“So we literally just put a list together, and then went out and described what the group would be and asked, ‘Would you be interested?’” said Morris.

Indianapolis Jewish Community Relations Executive Director Lindsey Mintz remembers having coffee with Cockrum, who had signed on to the group and was gauging Mintz’s interest. Before Cockrum had fully explained the concept, Mintz remembers being hooked.

“I wanted in. I had gotten all sorts of stuff that I could talk about and getting access to all of this expertise and support was the selling point,” said Mintz, the group’s youngest member.

Rounding out the group are ACLU’s Executive Director Jane Heneger, Second Presbyterian Church’s senior pastor Lewis Galloway and IU Health’s senior vice president and chief mission and values officer Kevin Armstrong. Lanham said that recently the group decided to remain under 10.

Stockamp stressed that members cannot be vulnerable, but must be willing to cry and laugh. By nature of their positions, executive directors must provide direction for the entire organization, allow it to thrive and adjust to fit the changing needs of the people or issues at the core of its mission. They must motivate a team of people — all of whom rely, in one way or another, on the direction of the executive to maintain the viability of the entire organization.

Not everyone heads a nonprofit, so technically the group is not just for CEOs. With no official name, several members write MBO (mission-based organization) on the calendar. Morris quipped that maybe a name and matching t-shirts are needed.

“I have staff members who say, ‘What is that thing on your calendar every month?’ And I say, ‘That’s top secret, I cannot talk about it,’” said Cockrum.

Regardless of the name, the group plays a significant role for each member, and confidentiality is paramount. There is no signed agreement, but everyone adheres to the policy, and all understand it includes spouses and partners.

“Kyle may know you, but Kyle won’t know your wife. He may be less inclined to share something, if he’s not sure that he can trust her. So that was an important lesson for me 21 years ago, and definitely one I shared,” said Lanham. “This is a place where I can go and have a conversation and I know it will be confidential. Getting the right mix of people is important.”

From its start three years ago, the focus has always been a de facto support group and gives each member a confidential sounding board. While most have someone on their individual staffs to turn to for advice, there is a limit of what can be shared, and sometimes a feeling of loneliness.

“Every industry and job has its source of stress, but there is something unique to organizations where ‘Yes, I have to balance my budget, and I have to go out and find money, but I am trying to improve society in some way.’ There’s an understanding that all of us feel passionate about our missions. Really being there for each other and what each other’s going through is part of the glue,” said Mintz.

Meeting guidelines are simple: keep the group small — between eight to 12 — and attendance is a priority. Monthly meetings start at 8 a.m., with a rotating location and host, and a precise agenda. There is a guaranteed finish of 10:30 a.m.

“I think because this group of eight jelled so well and because our purpose for being has become so meaningful. If I really needed to feel shored up, I have that Monday morning to look forward to with seven individuals, and be sure that when I walk out of there at 10:30 in the morning and start my week for real that I walk a little stronger and straighter than when I walked in the door,” said Cockrum.

Meetings begin with a three-minute check-in to share each person’s highs and lows — professional, personal or a combination – of the last month. After check-ins, the harder work begins. Using a coach-presenter format, an individual poses a topical challenge. Prior to the meeting, the coach helps the individual tease out the issue.

“At the core is a question that they’re bringing to the group. While the group has expertise, it’s not there to necessarily advise or sort of be a wisdom council. It is there primarily to stir up the question, maybe build on the question,” said Morris. “We are really trying to get the presenter to think more broadly about it, to see if there are deeper questions to ask.”

While everyone takes on the presenter role, Mintz admitted that she had to be coached a couple of times before she had the nerve to offer to coach somebody. “There’s a ton of trust that you have to build, too,” she said.

This 45-minute portion of the monthly meeting tends to be fairly interactive. The presenter’s situation might be how to manage a project or tackle a staffing issue or board problem, but topics tend not to focus on funding. No matter, it’s eye-opening for the group.

“Every major decision that I’ve made, I went to the group first. The coach helps to make sure that the question you are asking is the right one. I have learned with help from the coach that my original question is not really the question,” said Lanham.

Clearly, everyone has a stake in the game.

“Invariably it’s not just the person learning something and getting feedback from other people, but everybody around the table takes something away from it. It may be one person’s issue, but we all get to grow from it and learn from it,” said Mintz. “I don’t think I’ve ever missed a session. There is very little that I wouldn’t move to make one of these sessions happen.”

“For me, it is getting advice from a bunch of people who know me, know my situation and have good judgment. That’s why the group is important,” said Lanham.

At the end of the session, there is a pregunta degu – literally, “ask me” — a question of the day. One member takes responsibility for leading this. Recently it’s been Lanham, and it’s designed to dig a little deeper.

“I think that’s been a very valuable part. You can gloss over it, think, ‘Aw, it’s just a fun little way to get to know each other,’ but it allows you to listen to the seasonal pulse of somebody and where they are,” said Morris.

While the group doesn’t often talk about an issue again, Mintz said, everything builds on previous conversations and deeper relationships.

“But really the sense of understanding, that sense I can say just a couple of sentences and I know that they’ll all get it, even though we all have very different organizations. For me as a younger professional, to find my legs, and my own voice, that’s also something that I learn a lot from this group. It’s really, really huge to be able to have that conversation with people in totally different industries, and faith traditions,” said Mintz.

But it doesn’t stop with the monthly meeting. There is a constant ebb and flow of information, and someone is emailing an article.

“It is important to just be reminded, that it’s about the journey, but it’s also about the destination. Sometimes you get so caught up in your daily meanders and challenges and you sort of forget what the long game is. And this group helps keep that focus,” said Cockrum.

Mar 13

Serve better through design: Use design thinking to better engage your audiences

By Sponsor Insight

By Mark Shreve, business development manager, SmallBox

Nonprofit organizations are not immune to the same challenges presented to for-profit businesses. You must survive economic swings, respond to political orders and actions, address shifting demographic needs, compete for attention, and increase impact to those you serve and do all this with shrinking budgets and teams.

Shall I say more?

But most nonprofits also are serving their audiences — members, donors, students, patients — with greater attention, a byproduct of operating in the Experience Economy, where people want to move beyond consumption and focus on participation.

As you battle for their attention, you’re also fighting for their support. Nonprofits often have the added challenge of asking these same audiences to fund the experience delivered to them. In order to adapt to these forces effectively and efficiently, and to generate meaningful experiences that will attract, engage, and retain their audiences, we believe, nonprofit organizations should turn to human-centered design principles.

Human-centered or design thinking provides a framework to understand how audiences — members, donors, students, patients — think, act and feel. This process allows a deeper investigation than just proposing initiatives that may satisfy your audiences. It demands thinking about the entire experience delivered, and do it with contextual data to yield greater results. When every penny counts, this process ensures failing forward and finds lasting impact faster.

Design thinking empowers you to be a more creative and effective problem solver

If you have ever wished to take a timeout and disrupt your approach to work, now is your chance. Human-centered design has been helping healthcare, education and cultural institutions.

SmallBox follows a five-stage and circuitous process that builds on empathy, encourages collaboration, and yields a prototype to test with audiences. The idea here is to be inclusive, thorough, exploratory, and not just innovate for the sake of innovation. Make the investment of time to do this right, and it will benefit those the nonprofit serves and those who lead the work.

Let’s move beyond theory and into practice. The first step in a human-centered process is to empathize with your audiences. It’s their experience you’re developing so understand their point of view is critical to success.

Our approach is to ask, listen (not always obvious!), and involve your audiences. Here are a few examples from recent projects:

  • Ask your audiences and improve communications: A small college wanted to explore their alumni communications to maximize resources, align their team’s efforts and to increase engagement among their audiences. First step, we surveyed 3,000 people to understand how they wanted to receive communications and what they valued most from different touch points. Insights gathered from this survey directed our work to redevelop the experience of creating and distributing content in the alumni magazine, which resulted in just one touch point with their audiences.

Take away: As you seek to understand what your audience needs, consider asking them to envision a future state to shed them of their current blinders!

  • Listen to your audiences and increase the value of membership: A large state university sought to redesign the membership experience for segmented generational groups. The perceived value of membership varied between boomers and millennials. After listening to alumni via participatory ideation sessions, a new “freemium” option was added to mirror the discounted services model this group was accustomed to receiving before they invested more.

Take away: Human-centered design keeps audiences at the center of the problem so if you ask, be prepared to listen!

  • Involve your audiences and attract donors: A hospital foundation wanted to attract more donors in the Indianapolis community. So, rather than pitch to prospective donors, we asked them to pitch to the foundation. During a participatory focus group, we provided scenarios to foundation volunteers and community leaders and challenged them to create experiences to tie donors to the work of the foundation. What we heard in those sessions will inform messaging and touch points with the community.

Take away: Involve your audiences in the process for more buy-in!

After each of these organizations empathized, they moved to the next phases of the process – framing their insights and takeaways, ideating on new solutions and then prototyping and testing the viability of those solutions.

So, when was the last time you stopped juggling your tasks to really connect with and talk to your audiences?

Take the first step. Like the idea, but not sure where to begin? Convene a group of stakeholders to determine if the experience you’ve created is the one most aligned with those you serve. If not, turn to a human-centered framework to guide you as you redesign the experience.

mark-shreve Mark Shreve has supported nonprofit organizations for over a decade and is currently the business development manager at SmallBox, a brand experience agency that helps with organizational alignment and customer engagement.

SmallBox collaborates with organizations dedicated to creating impact and serving others. Initiate a conversation with Mark at mark@smallbox.com.

Mar 06

Philadelphia ends practice of billing parents for their children time in detention

By Feature

By Eli Hager, reporter, The Marshall Project

The city of Philadelphia announced Friday that it will stop billing parents for the cost of their children’s incarceration, just hours after a front-page Marshall Project story in The Washington Post highlighted the practice in the city and across the nation.

Billing parents for incarcerating their children goes far beyond Philadelphia and is rooted in decades-old social policy based on the belief that families were shedding responsibility for delinquent children and expecting the government to pick up the tab.

Nineteen states and county-level juvenile justice systems in 28 other states now charge parents for jailing juveniles, often using a child-support model to determine the cost and collect debt, the story found. But there are some signs of change: A county-by-county effort to end the collections is also underway in California, where a bill to abolish the practice outright has been introduced in the state legislature.

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Mar 06

Google will give $11.5 million to 10 organizations fighting for racial justice

By Feature

By Matt Petronzio, social good editor, Mashable

Google thinks science and data are key in advancing racial justice — and it’s putting up millions of dollars to prove it.

The tech giant’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, is pledging $11.5 million to U.S. organizations dedicated to racial justice and criminal justice reform. The grants will be distributed over the next three years to 10 different nonprofits and initiatives, all working toward racial equality and equity in innovative ways.

The new commitment marks the latest effort in this space from Google.org, which has provided $5 million in grants to racial justice innovators since 2015. Past recipients include Black Lives Matter cofounder Patrisse Cullors and the nonprofit Equal Justice Initiative.

Justin Steele, principal at Google.org, announced the news in a blog post Thursday, beginning with his personal attachment to the cause. He said all the black men in his family have worked in some form of law enforcement, including his grandfather, a Port of Seattle police officer, and his father, a detention chief in Snohomish County, Washington. He’s seen firsthand how police can be a force for good in communities.

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Mar 06

Redefining teacher development

By Education, Feature

By Becca Shareff & Erin Murphy-Graham, Graduate School of Education at UC Berkeley

When Lucia was working as an assistant in a health clinic in her home community, Sistema de Aprendizaje Tutorial (SAT) — a program designed to help people from rural areas gain a secondary-level education — recruited her to be a teacher. As soon as she started her new job, however, she realized that she was not prepared to teach the topics she was supposed to be covering. While working through a unit on soil science, for example, she felt confident about the scientific content in the curriculum, but knew that she had to defer to her students when it came to discussing  the farming activities that would put that science into practice.

To address this challenge, Lucia shifted her role from being a direct instructor to a guide. Knowledge-building became a shared process within the class, and together, Lucia and her students worked to combine theory and practice. The approach worked, and, as Lucia reports, it also complements the way in which SAT trains its teachers. Once shy and afraid to ask questions, Lucia is now an active and vocal participant in the ongoing training she receives from SAT; as a result, that training has become “indispensable.”

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Mar 06

Developing an effective dashboard and key performance indicators

By Sponsor Insight

By Jim Simpson, CPA and director, Financial Technologies & Management

Nonprofits are complex organizations that are built around mission and outcomes, which must be supported by the right revenue and expense models.

Dashboards are one way to simply communicate and give an overview of the organization by using a graphical summary of important information. It is an easy way for decision-makers to see where and whether the organization is on the planned financial path, and additionally can be used with funders and stakeholders to transparently show progress towards desired goals.

But a dashboard without metrics is useless to the organization, it is important to develop the associated metrics and constantly review to ensure you are actually measuring success for the organization.

Effective dashboards

Charts and graphs are not considered a dashboard unless that have the following characteristics:

  • Align success definitions across organization
  • Encourage communication regarding progress towards goals
  • Identify successes and challenges
  • Actual data and evidence to make decisions
  • Strengthen relationships between different activities

A properly designed dashboard allows a nonprofit to monitor its effectiveness as evidenced by the financial health along with the impact of the programs and services provided. Board and staff should develop strategy and goals to create dashboards with focused conversation and collaboration.

When you select the dashboard elements, you should understand the data you will track and how that data will influence decision making. Questions to ask include: Are the metrics for the organization or particular function? Is the tool for the board, staff, or funders?

Successful dashboards achieve the following:

  • Successfully communicate strategic-level results
  • Present data in a user-friendly visual format
  • Create snapshot of current status and trends over time
  • Show performance against defined targets
  • Highlight out-of-the-ordinary results
  • Create a manageable set of key performance indicators

Consider each revenue and expense stream and the factors that influence the reliability and predictability and what contributes to the increasing or decreasing of these streams.

Performance indicators (KPIs)

it is important to determine the program-delivery mechanism that influences results. Different types of nonprofits have different organizational models with different drivers for success. It is important to select Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) that focus the organization on data that will support decision-making. Consider whether you need a dashboard that reflects trends over time or performance against goals.

In order to get started, focus on the most important part of the process, which is to define the key drivers and metrics while focusing on the most pressing issues to start. This will help you start the process of developing your organization’s key performance indicators and the related dashboards to move your organization towards data driven decision-making.

When creating a dashboard and KPI’s, you should do the following:

  • Start with the big picture
  • Identify the audience and how to engage it
  • Define business model drivers and key levers inherent in program delivery
  • Choose KPIs in a thoughtful, team-based process that is inclusive
  • Re-evaluating KPIs is an ongoing process
  • Establish a culture of data driven decision making

Successful Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) achieve the following:

  • Represent business model drivers
  • Reflect progress towards intended outcomes
  • Guides priorities and decisions
  • Limited number of KPIs that can be realistically monitored
  • Should be periodically reassessed

When putting the dashboard reporting into action make sure you consider the following:

  • Where does data come from?
  • Who is responsible to collect data?
  • How will dashboard be updated and how often?
  • What platform or tools should we use to update dashboard?

jim-simpson Jim Simpson, CPA and director of Financial Technologies & Management, is a nonprofit financial leader and trainer, CFO, controller, forensic consultant and software advisor, including Abila MIP Fund Accounting since 1999. He has served CFO, controller and software advisor for over 25 years to over 350 nonprofit organizations.

Contact Financial Technologies & Management to see how we can help your nonprofit with accounting solutions. You can schedule an appointment directly from the website at WWW.FTMLLC.COM, email info@ftmllc.com or phone at 317-819-0780.